The present invention relates to a liquid ejection apparatus for ejecting liquid toward a target and a method of ejecting liquid using such a liquid ejection apparatus.
An ink jet recording apparatus as an exemplary liquid ejection apparatus is equipped with an ink jet recording head. The ink jet recording head is provided with a large number of nozzles for ejecting ink toward a recording sheet or the like.
Since each nozzle has an aperture, ink is exposed to the air and its solvent such as water evaporates gradually. If that part of the ink which is in the vicinity of the meniscus which is a free surface of the ink in the nozzle is increased in viscosity because of the evaporation of the ink solvent, an ejected ink droplet may fly in an erroneous direction because of a drag by the viscosity-increased ink or a nozzle may clog up.
To prevent various kinds of trouble due to such increase in ink viscosity, what is called flushing operations are performed in which ink is ejected from each nozzle at prescribed intervals (refer to Patent document 1, for example).
For example, as shown in FIG. 1 of Japanese Patent Publication No. 2002-166575A, an ink absorbing member is disposed at a position far from a region where a recording sheet is disposed (referred as a recording region) and a flushing region is established there. A flushing operation is performed in such a manner that the ink jet recording head is moved to the flushing region and ink is ejected there.
However, where the flushing region is provided at a position far from the recording region, the ink jet recording head is moved from the recording region to the flushing region every time a flushing operation is performed.
This means a problem that time is taken for the ink jet recording head to make such a movement to increase a time period required for recording, that is, the use of time is inefficient. The efficiency of use of time in connection with recording is particularly low when recording is performed on a narrow sheet such as a postcard, because a long distance exists between the flushing region and the region where a postcard or the like is disposed.